Allah told us why He created us and said:

وَمَا خَلَقْتُ ٱلْجِنَّ وَٱلْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونِ

Zariyaat 51: 56   And I (Allah) created not the jinns and humans except they should worship Me (Alone).

In order that we can live our lives in a state of worshipping Allah, He sent Islam and told us to follow it completely in all aspects of our lives. He said:

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱدْخُلُوا۟ فِى ٱلسِّلْمِ كَآفَّةً وَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا۟ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيْطَـٰنِ إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمْ عَدُوٌّ مُّبِينٌ

Baqara 2: 208      O you who believe! Enter perfectly into Islam (in all aspects of life) and follow not the footsteps of Shaytaan. Verily! He is to you a plain enemy.

My brothers and sisters, we seem to live in a time where we have made the Deen subservient to ourselves. We seem to believe that simply doing personal acts of worship and that also when it is convenient to do so, is sufficient for us. Why then did Allah order the Believers to enter Islam completely and perfectly? After all they are Believers because they entered Islam. Then what does it mean to enter Islam completely and perfectly?

Let us remember that Islam is a practice. It is a complete way of life that touches every aspect of our lives. It is something that we can take the help of and rely on for every decision that we need to make, be it domestic, public, administrative, business or anything else. Islam shows us the way. I remind myself and you that the purpose of life is to worship Allah as it is His right to be worshipped in the way taught to us by His Messenger Muhammad. That is the essence of the Kalima Tayyiba – La ilaha illAllahu Muhammadur Rasoolullahi. When we bear witness that only Allah is worthy of worship, we worship Him alone. And when we bear witness that Muhammad is His Messenger, the last and final of all Messengers, we prove that by worshipping Allah in the way that Muhammad taught us to worship Him. That is why Salah is so critically important, because it is the physical manifestation of the Kalima Tayyiba; the demonstration of Tawheed. This principle of worshipping Allah in the way taught by His Messenger is extended in Islam to every aspect of life. To obey Allah the way Rasoolullah did. That is the essence of entering Islam completely.

To understand what went wrong, first a bit of history. The Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) was more than moving from handmade to machine-made. It changed three critical things: time of day, family dynamics, and method and content of education. These changes are almost never mentioned but they are far more important than the invention of the assembly line and literally changed our society in ways that one can safely say are irreversible. What are these changes?

Prior to 1760 society was mostly agrarian. If you want to see what that was like, I strongly advice a visit to the Amish in Pennsylvania or elsewhere. They are people who have decided not to change. Whether that is for the good or not is for you to decide and I am not going to describe it in detail because for a proper understanding it is essential to visit an Amish settlement. They welcome visitors and tourism is a source of income for them, so please go and visit them. I can assure you that it will be interesting.

The Industrial Revolution changed the time of day from sunrise to sunset, to shift start and knock off in the factory. Your day could begin at 2.00 AM and end at 2.00 PM. And your night was from 2.00 PM onwards or whatever the shift time was. At least one parent never saw their kids awake. This is also how the latchkey kid was born. A kid with the doorlatch key on a tape round his neck,